Internet Test-Taking Patent Draws Official Suspicion

San Francisco - At the request of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) will reexamine a controversial patent for online test-taking from Test.com. The reexamination order is the second granted in just two months after petitions from EFF's Patent Busting Project.

EFF filed the reexamination request because the extremely broad patent claims to cover almost all methods of online testing. Test.com has used this patent to demand payments from universities with distance education programs that give tests online. But EFF, in conjunction with Theodore C. McCullough of the Lemaire Patent Law Firm, showed that Test.com was not the first to come up with this testing method -- IntraLearn Software Corporation had been marketing an online test-taking system long before Test.com filed its patent request.

"Bogus patents like these are hurting innovation and education in America," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz, who heads up the project. "This is a perfect example of how the patent system is broken and what needs to be fixed."

Test.com now has the opportunity to file comments defending the patent, and then the PTO will determine whether to invalidate the patent. The PTO has narrowed or revoked roughly 70% of patents it has decided to reexamine.

The successful reexamination request for the Test.com patent is the latest big victory for EFF's Patent Busting Project, which combats the chilling effects bad patents have on the public interest and innovation. The first reexamination request was granted in April and involves a Clear Channel patent for a system and method of creating recordings of live performances, locking musical acts into using Clear Channel technology and blocking innovations by others.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the eBay patent case, signaling how important patent issues are in today's economy. In a unanimous decision, justices overturned a dangerous injunction rule that threatened free speech and consumers' rights -- following the reasoning outlined in an amicus brief from EFF. Four justices also joined in a concurring opinion questioning so-called "patent trolls" and business methods patents, which could foreshadow future intellectual property showdowns in the nation's highest court.

It’s been a joke for years now, from the days when Facebook was just a website where you said you were eating a sandwich and Instagram was just where you posted photos of said sandwich, but, right now, we really are living our everyday lives online. Teachers are trying to...

We are in an unprecedented time. People are being told to stay home as much as possible. Some of us are lucky enough to have jobs that can be done remotely, schools are closed and kids are home, and healthcare, grocery, or other essential workers are looking for respite where...

Want to show your support for EFF while you spend more and more time in video conferences and chats? Here's one fun way: virtual backgrounds! We've collected some of our favorite EFF designs that promote issues like transparency, creativity, innovation, and privacy, for users to protect their own privacy (and...

The Internet Society’s (ISOC) November announcement that it intended to sell the Public Interest Registry (PIR, the organization that oversees the .ORG domain name registry) to a private equity firm sent shockwaves through the global NGO sector. The announcement came just after a change to the .ORG registry agreement—the...

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is one of the most important laws affecting the Internet and technology. Without the DMCA’s safe harbors from crippling copyright liability, many of the services on which we rely, big and small, commercial and noncommercial, would not exist. That means Youtube, but also Wikipedia...

The National Football League seems to be gunning for a spot in our Hall of Shame by setting a record for all-time career TDs—no, not touchdowns, but takedowns. We’ve written before about the NFL’s crusade against anyone who dares use the words “Super Bowl” to talk about, well, the...

On Copyright Week, we like to talk about ways to improve copyright law. One of the biggest improvements available is to fix U.S. copyright’s broken statutory damages regime. In other areas of civil law, the courts have limited jury-awarded punitive damages so that they can’t be far higher than the...

YouTube, which has become essential for video creators to build an audience, has a new tool that’s supposed to help users respond to its copyright filter. Is it something that makes fair use a priority? No, it’s a way to make it easier to remove the part of a video...